The Family Midrash Says: the Book of Shmuel 2

Jewish scholars of midrash accept recognized that "midrashic" techniques, methods of interpretation of texts in the Hebrew Bible, have been creatively woven into Christian Gospel narrative and teaching cloth as much as Jews worked creatively with midrash in their own literature.

Jon D. Levenson

Jon D. Levenson

Jon D. Levenson wrote The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Cede in Judaism and Christianity to contend essentially that the "Christ of faith" effigy in the Gospels and Pauline epistles was a distinctively Christian-Jewish midrashic creation:

Jesus' identity as sacrificial victim, the son handed over to death by his loving father or the lamb who takes abroad the sins of the world . . . ostensibly so alien to Judaism, was itself constructed from Jewish reflection on the beloved sons of the Hebrew Bible. . . . (p. x)

Some other theme of Levenson's piece of work is that the Christian understanding that Jewish religion was obsolete is as well the product of a midrash on Jewish scriptures:

[T]he longstanding claim of the Church that it supersedes the Jews in large measure continues the quondam narrative pattern in which a late-built-in son dislodges his first-born brothers, with varying degrees of success. Nowhere does Christianity beguile its indebtedness to Judaism more than in its supersessionism. (p. x)

So nosotros have a scholar of Jewish midrash expounding on the idea that the near key Christian beliefs found in the New Testament were created from a form of interpretation of the Hebrew Bible (midrash) that was shared by Second Temple Jews and Jewish-Christians alike.

Levenson's work discusses the midrashic evolution of this thought through Jewish sectarian literature and on into its application in early Christian writings. The whole Christ of organized religion concept — the "just son" being sent to be "a sacrifice to atone for sins" and bring believers into a new family unit that supersedes the one-time is an idea entirely born of midrash. When New Testament scholars suggest that the disciples of Jesus turned to scripture in order to interpret the life and death of Jesus, they are in consequence saying that they did what was customary amidst erudite Jews of the day: they engaged in midrash to explain their current situation.

Every bit we saw in the previous post, information technology is legitimate to argue that the Synoptic Gospels flesh out a narrative of this Jesus through a midrash on the Elijah-Elisha cycle, with many other midrashic elements filling in the details. Simply if using the give-and-take "midrash" here offends some, I am quite willing never to mention it and speak entirely of creative "intertextuality", "transvaluation", "emulation", etc. After all, a rose by any other proper noun . . . .

While on the work of Levenson, here are a few more excerpts from The Death and Resurrection of the Honey Son that demonstrate that in his view not simply the large film of the "Christ of faith" is of midrashic manufacture, but that specific narrative tales in the Gospels and other scriptural references woven into the narrative (and in the epistles) are also "midrashic".

Equating the suffering servant of Isaiah and the sacrificial Isaac with Jesus is Midrash

Whether the interlacing of Gen 22:2, 12, and xvi with Isa 42:1 was original to the evangelists or a legacy of prior Jewish exegesis is unknown. Either way, the equation of Isaac with the suffering servant has its own potent midrashic logic. For . . . the suffering unto expiry of the retainer of YHWH had also had analogized to the condition of a sheep about to be slaughtered . . . .

It may well exist that the catalyst for this second midrashic equation [equating Isaiah'due south Servant and Isaac with Jesus] was the prior identification of Jesus with the paschal lamb . . . . (p. 201)

Midrash in Marking

The midrashic equation underlying the heavenly announcement of Marking 1:11 and its parallels makes explicit the theology of chosenness that lies at the foundation of the already aboriginal and well-established idea of the beloved son: the chosen one is singled out for both exaltation and humiliation, for celebrity and for death . . . . (p. 202)

Midrash in Matthew

The New Testament equivalent of this Israelite notion of the nativity of the beloved son to a barren adult female is the story of the virgin birth of Jesus (Matt 1:18-25; Luke ane:26-38) . . . . In [Matthew], the idea is midrashically linked to Isa 7:14, which speaks of a "young woman" . . . giving nativity to a son named "Immanuel." The midrash in question seems to depend upon the Septuagint rendering of 'alma as parthenos, a Greek give-and-take that oftentimes denotes a virgin (Matt 1:22-23). (p. 205-half dozen)

Midrash in Luke

In the case of Luke, the idea of the Virgin Birth is [midrashically] associated with the titles "Son of the Most Loftier" and "Son of God" and with Jesus' claims upon the Davidic throne (Luke 1:32-35). Underlying this is an extremely literal agreement of the Judean royal theology and its label of the Davidic male monarch as YHWH's son. (p. 206)

Midrash in John

The second scriptural quotation, Zech 12:10, is brought in order to make sense of the Roman soldier'southward thrusting his lance into the dead man's side: according to the evangelist, this, too, fulfills a prophecy. Here information technology is useful to remember that the relevance of a verse frequently extends beyond the words that the midrashist cites. In the case of Zech 12:10, information technology is highly suggestive to note the words that follow those cited in John 19:37:

. . . wailing over them as over a favorite son and showing bitter grief as over a first-born. (Zech 12:10c)

Nosotros have already had occasion to observe that the give-and-take here rendered "favorite son" . . . seems to have been, at least on occasion, a technical term for the son sacrificed as a burnt offering. (p. 207)

(The surrounding scriptures of the source of the midrash, fifty-fifty though not mentioned in the midrash itself, are ordinarily considered significant in the interpretation of midrash. One is reminded here of the (Goulder? Spong?) proffer that the proper name of John the Baptist'due south father, Zechariah, was derived from the book that came only prior to Malachi, the book speaking of the Elijah to come up and that was used to use to john the Baptist.)

Midrash in Paul

Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his descendant. It does not say, "And to descendants," every bit referring to many, merely as referring to ane, who is Christ. (Gal iii:sixteen)

Paul'south midrash in v xvi turns upon his interpretation of the morphologically singular commonage substantive . . . . Paul'due south midrash on the one word . . . "and to your descendant(s)," exemplifies a familiar and uneventful Jewish exegetical technique. (pp. 210-211)

Much early christology is Midrash

Much early christology is thus all-time understood as a midrashic recombination of biblical verses associated with Isaac, the beloved son of Abraham, with the suffering servant of Isaiah who went, Isaac-like, unprotesting to his slaughter, and with another miraculous son, the son of David, the future messianic king whom the people of Israel awaited to restore the nation and establish justice and peace throughout the world. (p. 218)

I take presented Levenson'southward central ideas more comprehensively in a series of posts that have been archived at Levenson: Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son.

James L. Kugel

In my starting time post of this series I quoted discussion from James Fifty. Kugel's In Potiphar'due south Business firm (another study of Jewish midrash) that demonstrated his articulate understanding that Jewish midrash (understood equally a particular way of interpreting the Scriptures) was found in the New Testament literature as much every bit in afterward rabbinic writings. I repeat some of those quotations here, and follow them with other quotations from In Potiphar'southward House indicating Kugel's awarding of the term "midrash" to specific New Testament passages.

Judaism and Christianity accept not only a book in common, the Hebrew Bible, simply too a common set of traditions about what that book means. For although these ii religions ultimately diverged on many issues — including the interpretation of Scripture — Christianity at its origin was a Jewish sect, and from the beginning it had adopted a number of Jewish assumptions nearly how to go nigh interpreting the Bible, likewise equally a substantial torso of Jewish traditions about the meaning of specific biblical passages. This common shop of biblical interpretations and the assumptions that underlie them are a subject field of no small importance; perhaps even more than the words of the Bible itself, they have helped to shape the very character of Judaism and Christianity. (p. 1, opening paragraph of the Introduction)

[A]ncient Jewish interpreters — scholars and ordinary folk, individuals or groups — had set out to provide explanations, and these explanations, known in Hebrew as midrash ("interpretation"), were plainly passed on orally for some time, communicated from scholar to scholar, from teacher to educatee, or from a preacher to his listeners. Midrash is non just dry biblical commentary: it is clever, inventive, quite down-to-world, sometimes humorous, often moving, and always full of fresh insights with regard to the biblical text. Little wonder, then, that information technology was passed on so widely and and then eagerly, not only among Jews of dissimilar sects and persuasions in late antiquity, only, as noted, in the nascent Christian churches as well. . . .

But [the Talmuds, Midrash Rabbah and the like are] but function of the library of early exegesis — and not the earliest part, either. Indeed, this library comprises works written from the third or second century B.C.Due east. on through the Middle Ages, and includes, in add-on to biblical commentaries as such, retellings of biblical stories in the authors' own words (such as are constitute abundantly in books written in the centuries merely before and after the beginning of the mutual era), likewise as interpretive translations, sermons prepared for synagogue or church, plus devotional poems, prayers, legal compendia, apocalyptic visions, and yet other works, all of which in some way or another laissez passer on traditions about the pregnant of detail biblical texts. Some of the books t hat prepare forth or echo these early exegetical traditions are, as stated, relatively well known: rabbinic works, or the writings of the outset-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, or, for that matter, the New Attestation which is full of traditional Jewish interpretations of stories and prophecies from the Hebrew Bible.

Kugel extends some of his discussions on specific midrash to certain New Testament passages, such as the following:

Midrash in John

It is interesting that in that location is even an echo of this midrash [i.east. Genesis Rabba 68:12*] in the New Testament:

Jesus answered him, "Considering I said to you, 'I saw you lot under the fig tree,' do you believe? Yous will encounter greater things than these." And he said to him, "Truly, truly, I say to y'all, you will run across heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Homo." (John 1:l-51)

How do nosotros know that this New Attestation passage is part of the in a higher place midrashic tradition, and not merely an allusion to the mention of angels "ascending and descending" in Genesis? Because it says "angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of human." Clearly this belongs to the exegetical school represented by R. Yannai above, that is, the 1 that takes bo in the Genesis text to mean not "on the ladder" only "for Jacob." So here too, bo is being taken equally referring to a person, namely, "upon the Son of homo." (p. 115)

• The citation in the starting time line is to Genesis Rabba 68:12, and the item midrash hither is:

* R. Hiyya the Peachy and R. Yannai [disagreed]: one said they went upward and down [bo] on the ladder; the other said they went up and down [bo] for Jacob. . . . as it is said, "Israel, by you lot am I made glorious" (Isa. 49:3) — you are the ane whose portrait is carved on high. They went up to see his portrait, then went down to see him sleeping. (Genesis Rabba 68:12)

Summary of larger discussions on Matthew, Luke, Paul . . . .

After discussing midrash in Matt. 5:43-44 ("hate your enemy"), 2 Thess. three:14-fifteen (a legal boundary), Luke 10:29-37 (The Good Samaritan) and Matt. eighteen:15 and other passages from DSS and Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs

In sum, the early exegesis of our brief passage from Leviticus had far-reaching implications for the behavior of different Jewish communities in tardily antiquity. This exegesis, no less than the other instances of early interpretation [midrash] surveyed herein, depended on a very close sifting of the Bible'southward words: "You shall not hate your brother in your heart; you shall surely reproach your neighbour, and you shall conduct no sin because of him. You shall not take revenge or bear a grudge confronting your countrymen, but yous shall love your neighbor similar yourself. . . ." Each of the italicized words, as we have seen, was the subject of speculation. The restrictions that were imposed on the ground of such expressions as "your blood brother," "your neighbor," and "your countrymen"; the hypocrisy and hiding that were understood to exist meant by hatred "in the heart"; the multiple acts of reproach suggested by the emphatic, "doubled" verb (translated as "surely approach"); and the various identifications proposed for the unspecified "sin" avoided by open reproach — all of these interpretations [midrash] came out of the almost minute examination of the divine text and its implications. (p. 240)

What implications are there for the actuality of sayings if they can be best explained as the output of a concatenation of midrashic studies?

Galit Hasan-Rokem

This section continues from an earlier post, Birth and Death of the Messiah: Two Jewish Midrash Tales. In that postal service I copied in full two Jewish midrash folk tales, ane about the birth of the Messiah and the other (a historical legend) nearly a Messiah'south death. I volition refer back to those narratives in what follows.

Hasan-Rokem compares in particular the rabbinic midrashic tale about the birth of the Messiah with the nascence narratives of Jesus in Luke and Matthew. The Jewish tale, and all its characters (including the infant Messiah himself), are of form entirely fictional, created to dramatize some midrashic interpretations of passages in the Hebrew scriptures. The 2d tale, on the other mitt, includes a mix of historical persons and characters with names that are symbolic or typological of their roles in the story. In both there is a mix of explicit observe of the Hebrew scriptures beingness interpreted, and implicit references that rely on the reader's knowledge of the Scriptures to be recognized. I draw attention to these features considering they are all features of the way midrash is applied to the Gospel genre.

The narrative of Jesus' nascency in the Gospels is a midrash

In Web of Life Hasan-Rokem sometimes has cause to compare the plot elements of respective Jewish and Christian stories. The midrash itself lies narrative reinterpretation of passages in the "Old Attestation" and that are woven into each of the narrative plots. Here is a case where Jewish and Christian midrash are applied to very similar forms of extended narrative literature. Of course the Gospels are not themselves of the folk tale genre, but they do borrow at times from that genre.

The plot elements do propose a shut affinity between this Midrash and that of Jesus' birth in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke: the babe'due south female parent is poor, natural signs appear pointing to the miraculous nativity (a star in the New Testament, a lowing ox in Lamentations Rabbah), a stranger (from the Due east?) brings the infant a present, and the female parent is the central figure while the father is absent-minded or marginal. Yet, the name of the Messiah'due south mother in Lamentations Rabbah is not Miriam, despite the frequent appearance of the proper name in the work. Moreover, the mother in the birth story in Lamentations Rabbah reverses the effigy of another mother linked to Beth Lehem, Rachel. Rachel'due south love and faith will redeem her children; the mistrust and bitterness of the mother of the Messiah Menahem decide the story's frustrating conclusion, when Menahem is lifted into heaven in a whirlwind.

Rachel is indeed the most powerful female figure in Lamentations Rabbah, and latent in her appearance in this text is also the strongest redemptive potential in this work. The God mourning the loss of his people sends his mourning prophet Jeremiah, to whom tradition ascribes the authorship of the biblical Volume of Lamentations, to telephone call "Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and Moses from their graves, as they know how to cry" (Lamentations Rabbah, proem 24). . . . . (p. 125-6)

Here Hasan-Rokem is comparing the plot elements of the corresponding Jewish and Christian stories. The midrash itself lies in the narrative that reinterpret passages in the "Old Testament" and that are woven through each of the narrative plots. Here is a case where Jewish and Christian midrash are practical to very like forms of extended narrative literature. Of grade the Gospels are non themselves of the folk tale genre, but they practice borrow from that genre.

So with very similar plot elements — poverty, natural signs, announcements and gifts from strangers, a key mother and marginal begetter, hints of Mary and Rachel — the two narratives play with their corresponding midrashic elements:

The rabbinic tale relies on the midrashic understanding of the scriptures to create the motif of hearing certain types of news from non-Jews, and for weaving in the chemical element of the messiah being taken up to heaven in a whirlwind (run into below for the detailed explanation); the Christian tales draw from some other midrash on the scriptures to create the details of the poverty and virginity of the mother, the place of nascence, etc.

A similar exegesis on the verse from [Micah 5:two] appears in the birth stories in the Gospels of Mathew i-ii and Luke 2, which the story virtually the birth of the Messiah Menahem closely resembles, including in such details as the discovery of the Messiah past a human being who had wandered toward him from far abroad in the Jewish narrative, the three wise men or the iii magi of the New Testament, the gifts to mother and infant, and the mother's poverty in both traditions. These similarities, in details plain lacking any theological significance, propose that these are neither polemics nor imitations only parallels typical of folk narrative. Folk traditions were shared by those Jews who belonged to the bulk and by others belonging to a minority grouping, who believed in Jesus equally the Messiah and joined the early Christian Church building, made up mostly of Jews. . . . . (p. 154, my emphasis)

For interest'southward sake I quote some other section from Hasan-Rokem's give-and-take comparing the gospels with the rabbinic story. I have added emphasis and rearranged the format in list course for quicker and easier reading on a screen.

The story in Lamentations Rabbah resembles in many details, as noted, the story of Jesus' birth in the Gospels of Matthew two:one-8 and Luke two:1-16.

• The stranger represented in the Midrash by the Arab is paralleled in Matthew by the three magi, who are priests of the Western farsi religion, also often mentioned in rabbinic writings. The Jew who finds the Messiah in Bethlehem likewise reaches him afterwards many wanderings from hamlet to hamlet and from town to town, as the magi go far from far, "from the East."

• In the Luke story, the birth of the infant Messiah is announced to the shepherds who, like the Jew tilling the soil in the Midrash, are in the field when they hear the message. The shepherds are informed past the angels but, in Matthew, the magi follow a sign from nature, a star that announces or signals the nascence of the Messiah. A sign from nature, in the shape of a lowing ox, too appears in the Midrash.

• In Matthew, the infant's life is threatened by Herod the Rex, who contrives to obtain data about the birth of the kid announced by the magi, and so kill him. The magi salve the child when they counsel his parents to escape, and Herod spends his wrath by slaying all infants in the Bethlehem area. In the Midrash, the threat to the infant is conveyed through the fears harbored by his mother regarding his time to come, and in the PT version, as noted, past her explicit want to strangle the enemies of Israel or the kid himself.

• The Jew selling swathes tries to save the infant by giving some of his trade on credit to the mother, and informs her he will return to visit, but to no avail. Swathes are too mentioned in the Christian story, in the annunciation to the shepherds in Luke: "Ye shall notice the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger" (2:12). This kid is indeed swaddled but, due to his parents' poverty, resembling the mother'southward poverty in the Talmudic-midrashic story, the nascence takes place in a manger.

• A motive analogous to that of giving the swathes of credit appears in Matthew, in the lavish gifts brought by the magi from the East: gold, incense, and myrrh.
  

The story about the Messiah's birth was thus a common tradition, a theme about which Jews in Palestine, beginning with the showtime century C.Eastward., told stories in several versions. (p. 155-six)

Excursis

Hasan-Rokem raises another perspective on this common image of a Messiah as a new-born infant built-in in poverty, with a prominent function for the mother, threatened with death, but destined to overturn history.

At another level, we may ponder about the perception of Messianism in a society that speaks of the Messiah as an infant born in dire poverty, whose life is threatened, and for whom the central, or even unique figure in life is his mother.

Hasan-Rokem sees in the imagery and plot elements here a broader cultural expression of a dream that is built-in out of all-pervading pain and loss. The messianic dream of promise is even a megalomaniacal. Both the Jewish and Christian cultures engaged with a promise of entrusting to a human being individual the power to reverse all history. The dream of one destined to give hope to all found hope in a redeeming messiah in human shape, wrapped in the images of impotence of a swaddling infant. "The infant personifies hope for the hereafter, merely the threat to him volition end in a ending that, at most, tin can merely be postponed."

Both are the sorts of stories that are all-time explained equally the fantastic hopes of a people who have suffered terrible loss without any hope of futurity redemption. I personally recall the post-70 scenario or even the events surrounding the Bar Kochba war are the most likely nascency-places for this idea among Christians. It is from that period that the Gospel narratives appear.

Note also the common themes of bitterness and condolement:

In the sequence of the midrashic text, the story most the nativity of the Messiah Menahem appears immediately after a number of stories about suffering women, all named Miriam . . . . The clan with the proper noun of Jesus' mother, as noted, is almost inevitable. The Midrash does non place the Messiah'due south mother by proper name just, nevertheless, a phonological and topical association arises betwixt the name of the child, Menahem, and the female parent of the 7 sons, Miriam the daughter of Tanhum. The root NHM, pregnant condolement, which is found in the two Hebrew stories, and the proper noun Miriam, pregnant bitter, which is found in the Christian narrative and in i of the Hebrew stories, bespeak the process between alleviation and grief that characterizes all three mothers. (p. 157)

(I have also liked the possibility that both Capernaum and Nazareth are midrashic insertions into the Gospel narratives. Capernaum too derives from the NHM (Condolement) root; and the previous post looks at the typically midrashic way in with Matthew manages to construe "Nazarene" from a town of Nazareth.)

Another midrashic chemical element in mutual is the linking of Elijah to the appearance of the Messiah. In the Jewish narrative the midrashic chemical element is well-nigh subliminal. One is reminded of the Gospel of Marking's many scriptural allusions recognizable only to those familiar with the Jewish scriptures. Matthew's Gospel, patently written for an audience less familiar with midrash, appears to find information technology necessary to make the scriptural allusions more explicit.

When the man returns to Bethlehem, mainly to inquire after the child rather than to collect his money, the mother tells him that winds and storms accept lifted the child away. On this consequence, Fraenkel'due south proffer to turn to the Aramaic translation of the poesy "and Elijah went up past a storm of wind into sky" (Kings II, 2:eleven) is highly suggestive. This translation uses the same rare discussion for a tempest (al'ol) as that found in the story near the birth of the Messiah, intimating a link between the motifs of Elijah and the Messiah. This connexion volition somewhen become the central tenor in Jewish Messianic narrative throughout history, as Elijah is traditionally cast as the harbinger of the Messiah's appearance (following the verse in Makakhi 4:5). (p. 160)

Messiahs, Mythemes and Midrash

I would like to conclude this serial with i more mail in which I discuss Hasan-Rokem'south study of three more rabbinic midrash stories relating to the autumn of Jerusalem and messiahs or redeemers who give promise of a new community life after the destruction of the old. In this post the comparisons with the Gospels will be ones I myself telephone call attending to (not Hasan-Rokem). I had originally intended to use them to conclude this postal service, but I have since seen the possibility of extending an understanding of them all through the framework laid out by anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss for a study of myths. Others may call up there is goose egg to such a possibility, but I'd similar to spill out a few thoughts nonetheless.

Till then, this postal service volition conclude my little 3-part serial on the concept of Midrash as it applies in particular to the agreement the nature of the Gospels as literature.

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